Jewish activists warn UK protest crackdown will stoke antisemitism
Police officers detain a protester during a mass demonstration organised by Defend Our Juries, against the British government’s ban on Palestine Action, London, 4 October 2025
Katherine Hearst reports in Middle East Eye on 7 October 2025:
When Zoe Cohen was hauled away by police officers for holding a handwritten sign in support of the now-proscribed direct action group Palestine Action, she could not hold back her tears. “As they picked me up, all the emotion of the day, and not just the day, but the collective grief and the distress of what’s happening in Gaza, it just came out of me. I was sobbing,” she previously told Middle East Eye.
Now, with UK Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announcing fresh protest restrictions in the wake of a deadly attack on a synagogue in Manchester on Thursday, Cohen’s grief, and her fears for her safety, have intensified. “As a Jewish person, I’ve never felt more scared,” Cohen told MEE. “But I feel scared because of this endless conflation of criticism of the state of Israel with antisemitism.”
The UK government proscribed Palestine Action under anti-terror laws on 4 July, after members broke into RAF Brize Norton and damaged two planes with paint and crowbars, saying they were “used for military operations in Gaza and across the Middle East”. The designation puts the group on a par with al-Qaeda and Islamic State under British law, making it a criminal offence to show support for or invite support for the group, punishable by up to 14 years in prison under the Terrorism Act 2000.
Since then, the campaign group Defend Our Juries (DOJ) has staged a series of protests demanding the proscription be overturned, drawing growing numbers of people willing to risk arrest under the Terrorism Act for holding signs that read: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”
Hours after another protest against the ban on Saturday went ahead, Mahmood announced new powers which would enable police to consider the “cumulative impact” of frequent protests on local areas and require demonstrators to change location of a planned protest. Ahead of Saturday’s protest, which saw 492 people arrested, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer warned the mass action would cause “distress” and urged those taking part to “recognise and respect the grief of British Jews” in the aftermath of Thursday’s attack.
London’s Metropolitan Police Commissioner Mark Rowley said that the protests would “likely create further tensions and some might say lack sensitivity”.
But Jewish activists who spoke to MEE said the framing of pro-Palestine marches as generating fear and distress in their communities is not only false, but dangerous.